Electronic Frost Bite at Yosemite

Posted on October 30, 2011 in Photography Photos Silicon Valley Travels - Past

I had a particularly crapulous and petty boss. One year, he gave me two days off at the holidays: Christmas and New Years. I worked up until 5 p.m. on both Christmas and New Year’s Eve, then came back to do pretty much nothing the days after.

This fellow just hated people who saw more to their lives than the enrichment of his personal income. I had been looking forward to the holidays as a time when my wife and I could relax and maybe see some of the parks. His crude maneuver of granting us only the minimal holidays threatened this.

But I found a way around it. Yosemite was only three hours away. I made up my mind to go there.

I announced this as I left the office. He mumbled something about the impossibility and foolhardiness of the venture. The next morning, I rose at six, loaded my camera and spouse in the car, and crossed the San Joaquin Valley to Yosemite.

I discovered a serious limit to what my camera could do. 8008s run off ordinary AA batteries. They can go a long time on four of these. But as I discovered when I stopped to photograph a beautiful waterfall, the batteries freeze up when it is too cold. As other people snapped away using their older SLRs, my state-of-the-art technology balked. Fstop and speed numbers flashed on the tiny screen ((This was no digital)) and then disappeared. My precious camera had died.

The Nikon came back to life when we parked in the village. I quickly figured out that if I kept the camera warm, it would keep taking pictures. So I rattled off two quick shots of the place where Yosemite Falls should have been ((The first time I laid eyes on the wonder was on this January day. And they weren’t there. Instead, the wall was covered by a long icicle. The next time we tried was on the last day of a trip — December 1 of the same year. Tioga Pass was still open, so we crossed the Sierras there and decided that while we were in Yosemite, we would slip into the Valley. This time the situation was even worse because the year had been especially dry. There was only the gray wall! We waited several years before we tried again and this time we went in the spring. Finally, we saw cascade after cascade thundering down the Valley walls. It’s all a matter of timing.)) and started on some closeups.

I danced with oak leafs, maple seeds, and a dead bee for about half an hour before we realized that if we didn’t leave soon, we’d have to drive the twisting road off the mountain in the dark. So we left the Yosemite Valley, stopped for dinner at a Golden Corral in — was it Merced or Modesto? — and made it home by nine in the evening.

I had had my holiday.